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Important news out of the NHL on Thursday afternoon with the confirmation of the league’s salry cap for 2023-24:
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I leave the very first reply on my timeline in there for comic relief (too soon?), but Strickland’s original tweet is the major item, deliveing the unwelcome news that there will be no premature inflation of the cap despite some promising indications a bit earlier in the season. The cap goes up by “just” $1 million, or to quote another reply, “Bravo, Mr. Bettman. Way to grow the game 1.25% at a time.”
That is already more than enough chatter about league business, which always bogs down in sleep-inducing words like “escrow” or rage-inducing ones like “third round pick to Calgary”. So let’s return instead to the central question, namely, “what does this mean for the Oilers?”
It doesn’t help, that’s for sure. There had been hope of a Get Out of Jail Free card in the form of a compromise larger cap increase for the summer of 2023, but that door has now been closed. The Oilers are far from the only team in cap jail, but they sure are one of them.
My takeaway is that to make the space he needs to take care of essential business like signing Evan Bouchard and Ryan McLeod, Oilers GM Ken Holland will likely need to divest a couple of his $3 million class contracts. In the past week we’ve zeroed in on forwards Kailer Yamamoto and Warren Foegele in this post, and d-men Cody Ceci and Brett Kulak in this one.
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Obviously the trade route is preferable to the buyout option, but there’s some good news — or at least, good rumours — on that front. In recent days NHL insiders including Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff and Chris Johnston of TSN both suggested there should be a market for Yamamoto, widely considered to be the likeliest to leave.
Seems likeliest that such a move and/or others to clear up the cap situation are most likely to happen at the Draft, where all the GMs get together in one spot, more than a few of them with itchy trading fingers. Oil fans are surely hoping for some kind of action at a Draft where the Oilers have just 3 picks, just 1 of those in the top 180. Ugh.
Let’s dig a little deeper into where all those picks went, not just this year but the 2 that follow. CapFriendly summarizes the situation nicely in this chart:
Click on the faded Oilers logos at the source and it provides background info which we summarize here:
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Add it all up and its 8 picks out, just 1 back and that “exception” a downgrade in an exchange of picks. And all that continues a trend for the Oilers dating back to 2017, the last time they selected as many as 7 players in any Draft.
What did those traded picks pay for? Largely the cost of “rental” players, the cost of cap retention on those rentals, the cost of outright dumping salary, the cost of attaching conditions, on and on. Of all the guys acquired with these picks, most of them near the deadline, only Ekholm came with term beyond the end of that season. And he cost a bundle.
That complex transaction with a conference rival still technically in the playoff race was very much against the grain for Holland, who does most of his shopping in the aisle of least resistance. Especially at the deadline, when his modus operandi is a standard deal between buyers and sellers — typically a rental player one way, a draft pick the other. In our first in-depth assessment of his trade tendencies 3 years ago, he was consistently a buyer throughout Detroit’s 25-year run as a playoff team, but he turned that philosophy on its ear immediately after Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch died in early 2017. Within a fortnight, Holland was trading out life-long Red Wings like Tomas Jurco and Brendan Smith for picks, with more of the same for the rest of his tenure in the Motor City.
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In Edmonton with a competitive team, Holland turned back into a deadline buyer, routinely trading picks for rentals like those named above and earlier ones like Mike Green, Andreas Athansiou, Tyler Ennis, Dmitry Kulikov.
But that’s at the deadline when buyers and sellers are practically defined by the standings. In June there are no standings, just cap realities. Surely this is the time to do the reverse if possible, trade out a player or two, collect a draft pick or two to replenish the deficit. But with whom should he be negotiating?
Holland’s current situation hinges on these key points:
The puzzle for Holland to solve is to find a suitable trading partner, ideally a rebuilding squad that meets all or most of these opposing criteria:
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One team that checks all 3 boxes is none other than the Arizona Coyotes. They’ve been mentioned twice already for collecting a trio of top-100 picks from Edmonton, all in the last 12 months. First came the Kassian exchange for 2 picks at the 2022 Draft, then the Bjugstad deadline deal for 1. Clearly Holland and Coyotes GM Bill Armstrong are comfortable doing business with each other.
The Desert Dogs meet the first 2 criteria with a bullet. They have tons of cap space, and much of what they have committed is to injured players acquired from other teams which can easily be assigned to LTIR if the ‘yotes are anywhere near the cap ceiling, or left on the active roster if needed to get to the cap floor. Plenty, and I mean plenty of flexibility there.
Then there’s the matter of draft capital. Check out Arizona’s bounty of picks over the 3 years to come:
12 picks in 2023, 7 of them in the first 3 rounds. Make it 14 and 8 respectively in 2024, and 11 and 7 in 2025. That adds up to 37 picks in 3 years, 22 of them guaranteed to be within the top 100 of their draft class.
That’s more picks than they can sign or develop. At some point they’ll start making opposite moves, trading out some of their bounty for more immediate help. And finally, there are signs that time is at hand.
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This from the Daily Faceoff:
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That’s good news on one level. We already know the Oilers can’t afford guys like Crouse or Schmaltz; now we also know hat they’re unlikely to wind up in inconvenient destinations like, say, Los Angeles. Same goes for Clayton Keller and Barrett Hayton, also named as “untouchables” by Seravalli recently in a different discussion.
But the intriguing bit to me is that the Coyotes “are looking to be more competitive next year”. That is — or would be — a welcome change in direction for a club that’s been lost in the desert for a decade. If they’re serious about it, they need to start adding NHL calibre support players, and they have both the cap space and wealth of draft picks with which to proceed.
Might they be interested in any of Edmonton’s $3 million men? One unfortunate reality is that all of Keller, Schmaltz and Crouse play wing themselves, as do Yamamoto and Foegele.
The latter would be an intriguing option all the same. He’s the kind of depth forward that used to define the Coyotes, worker bees like Jordan Martinook, Brad Richardson, Daniel Winnik. Nowadays the ‘yotes are a bit light in that player type, and could well afford to pay Foegele’s $2.75 million for a year while they evalaute him.
The Coyotes have more of a void on defence, where they have just 4 guys signed on their NHL roster. Not exactly Murderers’ Row either; that quartet averages a puny $1 million a man, with 574 games of combined NHL experience. Cody Ceci alone has more than that (707). Brett Kulak has nearly 200 more games than any individual Arizona d-man.. Might one of those vets be worth a third or even second round pick to Bill Armstrong? Better 2024 than 2023 as far as Holland is concerned; that would give him additional trade assets during the upcoming season
No doubt that if Arizona means business on their “more competitive” bent they will have a few suitors. The Oilers need to be one of them.
At the Cult of Hockey
STAPLES: Oilers’ top prospect could use the Bouch Boost from Holland
McCURDY: Impact time for Holland’s draft picks
STAPLES: Is there a market for Yamamoto? Insiders say yes
LEAVINS: Oil fans mourn sudden departure of TSN1260 — 9 Things
McCURDY: Yamamoto, Foegele useful players getting pinched by salary cap
Follow me on Twitter @BruceMcCurdy
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